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Vue lecture

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In the mirror universe

✇F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
Par :linsui

This Week in F-Droid

TWIF curated on Thursday, 09 Apr 2026, Week 15

F-Droid core

Mirrors are an integral part of F-Droid, as a vector for decentralization and user freedom. Besides our main servers, we had about 16 mirrors spread between Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Finland, France, Sweden, Taiwan, Singapore and the US. While the spread seems good enough, this planet is larger than 9 countries, no matter how good Internet interconnections are.

This April we’ve added 3 more mirrors from Romania meant for better coverage around the Balkans as a whole. The new servers are activated by default so you don’t need to setup anything. Many thanks go to chroot and Hostico for providing them, but also for being long time supporters of many important FLOSS projects.

I feel that my app installs are slow and my country was not listed above! Sure, networking is a complex subject, let’s also detail a bit what it takes for a mirror to end up in your client.

Given that we are celebrating 16 years of F-Droid means we are thinking in the long term, and we expect the servers that we use or link to, to have the same goals. Any future mirror needs to be hosted on like-minded infrastructure.

What does this mean in practice?

First of all, we are few and we probably don’t live near you, we need you to step up and lead this process for your own benefit first and then for all the others around you.

There are many hosters that might be sympathetic to our (and your) cause, so you’ll start by finding those in your country that might be a good fit. Seek a contact method (e-mail probably), try “tech support” not “accounting”, and ping them with the question, in your native language.

No matter the order of actions, you’ll need to look around and dig more info about them.

Take a look at how they are hosting in general. Is it another CDN (we already have Cloudflare, no need for another instance of it, thanks), baremetal, VPS or an array of Raspberry Pi’s? Can its hosting cope with another Google announcement of locking Android even more? We know our main server fronters cry a bit when news is out…

Who hosts it? Is it a company, institution or individual? How is their public track record? Are they already mirroring other FLOSS projects like the Linux Kernel, Debian, Arch, etc.?

Do they have a privacy policy? Are they supporting privacy by default? Are they not retain any data longer than is necessary?

If a mirror was set, we can start to monitor it to assess its speed and consistency of synchronizing, by first listing it in our mirror-monitor.

And if all these above are true and good, did you test it in your client? Multiple clients? Everything was fine for a few weeks?

Many questions need to be asked, but this ensures the next time you want to get the latest index, update apps or install a new app, everything runs smooth and you spend more time exploring that app and not watching a “snake” slithering slowly across your screen.

Want to start this journey for your country? Join our discussion in the dedicated issue, as we can share some stats and maybe a template for you to use when contacting hosters around you.

Community News

The old Lichess app was replaced by the new one, added last week, and aptly named the same: Lichess. If you’ve installed the app before last week make sure you install the new app and uninstall the old one.

Session F-Droid was updated to 1.33.2 but this might the last version, as the whole project is so under funded that they have entered their last 90 days of service. We’ve told you about their donations plea 3 weeks ago but since they did not reach the needed $1 million (this is the yearly cost of operation) all employees were let go and only maintenance by volunteers will take place until July 8. Read the full announcement here.

CodeDoctor puts on the bunny ears:

Happy Easter to everyone!

As a special treat for the holidays, I am incredibly excited to announce the release of Butterfly 2.5.0!

The update brings many long-awaited features and improvements to the app. From a rebuilt template system to custom keybindings and new touch shortcuts, this release focuses on customization and stability.

Highlights:

📓 Rebuilt Template System
🎨 Shape Styles
⌨️ Custom Keybindings
👆 New Touch Shortcuts
☁️ WebDAV Rewrite
📄 Improved PDF Rendering
🔷 Improved Polygon Workflow
📁 File Management Improvements
🖥️ Better Presentation Mode
💾 Better Export & Data Settings
🔤 Better Arabic Font
📋 Improved Logs

Read more here

@shuvashish76 sharpens the feed:

NewsBlur - News reader was updated to 14.2. We skipped version 14.0 so this update adds even more polish and fixes on top. What’s new? You get a redesigned reading experience, discover related sites, daily briefing, refined dark themes, story list header bar, redesigned preferences and menus, Ask AI and more.

Newly Added Apps

16 apps were newly added
  • audav: A cross-platform player for audiobooks stored on NextCloud/WebDAV
  • Bag: Bitcoin price tracker & net worth dashboard. No ads, no accounts, privacy-first.
  • Banana Split: Split secrets into QR-code shards using Shamir’s Secret Sharing
  • BlockAds: Clean Internet: Block ads & trackers system-wide. Firewall, SafeSearch, profiles
  • Call Blocker: Block unwanted calls, spam and telemarketing
  • Dima Defense: A simple Tower Defense game that was made in LibGDX
  • HiddenProtectedWorkProfile: Hidden Profile owner security app
  • Kompact: Compress and convert images offline. Batch select, set quality, and export
  • LearnTube: A learning-focused YouTube client with progress tracking and notes
  • Minesweeper: Beautiful Minesweeper. No ads, no trackers, no permissions.
  • Nian: Collection of word games in Swedish
  • Quick Ball: A Quick Action Ball that gives fast access to controls —volume, brightness, lock
  • Sobuu: Track books reading and organise your readings
  • SubSonicSter: Play Hitster card game with your own SubSonic music server
  • Tapjacking Bypass: Allow obscured touches for specific apps
  • WallApp: WebView wrapper for the TheWallApp wallpaper website

Updated Apps

184 more apps were updated
(expand for the full list)

Thank you for reading this week’s TWIF 🙂

Please subscribe to the RSS feed in your favourite RSS application to be updated of new TWIFs when they come up.

You are welcome to join the TWIF forum thread. If you have any news from the community, post it there, maybe it will be featured next week 😉

To help support F-Droid, please check out the donation page and contribute what you can.

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Keep Android Open

✇F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
Par :linsui

This Week in F-Droid

TWIF curated on Friday, 20 Feb 2026, Week 8

F-Droid core

During our talks with F-Droid users at FOSDEM26 we were baffled to learn most were relieved that Google has canceled their plans to lock-down Android.

Why baffled? Because no such thing actually happened, the plans announced last August are still scheduled to take place. We see a battle of PR campaigns and whomever has the last post out remains in the media memory as the truth, and having journalists just copy/paste Google posts serves no one.

But Google said… Said what? That there’s a magical “advanced flow”? Did you see it? Did anyone experience it? When is it scheduled to be released? Was it part of Android 16 QPR2 in December? Of 16 QPR3 Beta 2.1 last week? Of Android 17 Beta 1? No? That’s the issue… As time marches on people were left with the impression that everything was done, fixed, Google “wasn’t evil” after all, this time, yay!

While we all have bad memories of “banners” as the dreaded ad delivery medium of the Internet, after FOSDEM we decided that we have to raise the issue back and have everyone, who cares about Android as an open platform, informed that we are running out of time until Google becomes the gate-keeper of all users devices.

Hence, the website and starting today our clients, with the updates of F-Droid and F-Droid Basic, feature a banner that reminds everyone how little time we have and how to voice their concerns to whatever local authority is able to understand the dangers of this path Android is led to.

We are not alone in our fight, IzzyOnDroid added a banner too, more F-Droid clients will add the warning banner soon and other app downloaders, like Obtainium, already have an in-app warning dialogue.

Regarding F-Droid Basic rewrite, development continues with a new release 2.0-alpha3:

  • Updated Translations
  • Export installed apps list as CSV
  • Add install history feature
  • Add mirror chooser setting
  • Add prevent screenshots setting
  • Show tool-tips for all app bar buttons
  • Create 3-dot overflow menu for My Apps for less frequently used actions
  • Persist sort order of My Apps
  • Adapt strings according to Material Design 3 guidelines
  • Apply string suggestions (Thanks Lucas)
  • Fix missing icon bug in pre-approval dialog

Note that if you are already using F-Droid Basic version 1.23.x, you won’t receive this update automatically. You need to navigate to the app inside F-Droid and toggle “Allow beta updates” in top right three dot menu.

In apps news, we’re slowly getting back on track with post Debian upgrade fixes (if your app still uses Java 17 is there a chance you can upgrade to 21?) and post FOSDEM delays. Every app is important to us, yet actions like the Google one above waste the time we could have put to better use in Gitlab.

Community News

Buses was updated to 1.10 after a two year hiatus.

Conversations and Quicksy were updated to 2.19.10+free improving on cleaning up after banned users, a better QR workflow and better tablet rotation support. These are nice, but another change raises our interest, “Play Store flavor: Stop using Google library and interface directly with Google Play Service via IPC”. Sounds interesting for your app too? Is this a path to having one single version for both F-Droid and Play that is fully FLOSS? We don’t know yet, but we salute any trick that removes another proprietary dependency from the code. If curious feel free to take a look at the commit.

Dolphin Emulator was updated to 2512. We missed one version in between so the changelogs are huge, luckily the devs publish highly detailed posts about updates. So we’ll start with “Release 2509” (about 40 mins to read), we side-track with “Starlight Spotlight: A Hospital Wii in a New Light” (for about 50 mins), we continue to the current release in “Release 2512” (40 more minutes) and we finish with “Rise of the Triforce” delving in history for more than one hour.

Image Toolbox was updated to 3.6.1 adding many fixes and… some AI tools. Were you expecting such helpers? Will you use them?

Luanti was updated to 5.15.1 adding some welcomed fixes. If your game world started flickering after the last update make sure to update.

Nextcloud apps are getting an update almost every week, like Nextcloud was updated to 33.0.0, Nextcloud Cookbook to 0.27.0, Nextcloud Dev to 20260219, Nextcloud Notes to 33.0.0 and Nextcloud Talk was updated to 23.0.0.

But are you following the server side too? Nextcloud Hub 26 Winter was just released adding a plethora of features. If you want to read about them, see the 30 minutes post here or watch the one hour long video presentation from the team here.

ProtonVPN - Secure and Free VPN was updated to 5.15.70.0 adding more control to auto-connects, countries and cities. Also all connections are handled now by WireGuard and Stealth protocols as the older OpenVPN was removed making the app almost 40% smaller.

Offi was updated to 14.0 with a bit of code polish. Unfortunately for Android 7 users, the app now needs Android 8 or later.

QUIK SMS was updated to 4.3.4 with many fixes. But Vishal praised the duplicate remover, the default auto de-duplication function and found that the bug that made deleted messages reappear is fixed.

SimpleEmail was updated to 1.5.4 after a 2 year pause. It’s just a fixes release, updating translations and making the app compatible with Android 12 and later versions.

Removed Apps

5 apps were removed
  • Chord Shift: Shift plain text notes
  • OpenAthena™ for Android: OpenAthena™ lets common drones spot precise locations
  • Tibetan Keyboard: Keyboard for Tibetan script
  • Tibetan Pad: Read Tibetan script
  • Tomdroid: Note taker

Newly Added Apps

1 app was newly added
  • NeoDB You: A native Android app for NeoDB designed with Material 3/You

Updated Apps

287 more apps were updated
(expand for the full list)

Thank you for reading this week’s TWIF 🙂

Please subscribe to the RSS feed in your favourite RSS application to be updated of new TWIFs when they come up.

You are welcome to join the TWIF forum thread. If you have any news from the community, post it there, maybe it will be featured next week 😉

To help support F-Droid, please check out the donation page and contribute what you can.

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Toy stories characters

✇F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
Par :linsui

This Week in F-Droid

TWIF curated on Friday, 23 Jan 2026, Week 4

F-Droid core

Back in March 2024 we announced our switch to Debian version 12 (named Bookworm) and today we are announcing our upgrade to version 13 nicknamed Debian Trixie. We have been testing this internally for months and as of today we’ve had several cycles that already built apps with the new version.

What does this mean? For you as a user, nothing at all, apps are included, updated and archived as usual.

For you as a developer, Trixie uses Java 21 by default so we’d need to evaluate how your app or app recipe can be best updated now. If your app already used 21 there’s nothing to do. If it uses 17 or older, we’d need to adapt the build recipes to either install the older version or adapt the source code to build with 21 but produce Java 17 byte-code or, better yet, ping you to see if an upgrade to Java 21 can be done easily.

We are processing apps as they come so you’ll hear from us if there’s any need for help.

Community News

The old Matrix client got a new name, Element Classic, and was updated to 1.6.48, while the newer one, Element X - Secure Chat & Call was updated to 26.01.1.

Are you coming to FOSDEM 2026 next week? If you are, make sure FOSDEM 2026 Schedule and/or FOSDEM Companion are installed, they both got an update this week, and keep the schedule up to date. Also, bookmark our presentations and find our booth to say ‘hi’.

Launch - Minimalist Launcher was archived as it got an application ID change. If you’ve installed it before this week, make sure to jump ship to the new Launch - Minimalist Launcher, A clean, efficient, and minimalist launcher.

Luanti was updated to 5.15.0 with a plethora of changes.

Tusky was updated to 32 beta 01, but not yet suggested (install manually or toggle Betas in the menu). The big change lies in the new timeline code that was rewritten in a modern framework, meaning all things “post” are now better.

Newly Added Apps

16 apps were newly added
  • aShell You: A material you designed app for your ADB needs
  • Conceal Authenticator: Secure 2FA authenticator with blockchain backup and encryption
  • Dragon Launcher: Fast and efficient launcher based on gestures and minimalism
  • Flauth: Privacy-first, open-source TOTP authenticator for 2FA token management
  • KashCal: Privacy-focused calendar with iCloud sync. Offline-first. No tracking
  • Min Time: A minimalistic countdown app to help structure your talks and presentations
  • NFC Radio: Simple NFC audio player to start playback with NFC tags
  • Panoramicon: View 360° spherical panoramas using your device’s motion sensors
  • Rhythm: Your Music, Your Rhythm - Privacy-first player with Material 3 design
  • Rue:barbe -- modal split counter: Manually count passing bike, pedestrian and cars and calculate the modal split
  • Share to folder: Share data from other apps to a folder
  • Simple Notes Sync: Notes & checklists with WebDAV sync to your own server
  • Simply Scored: Track your game scores easily
  • Slauncher: I use this launcher
  • Termux Hub: A lightweight app that indexes Termux tools from GitHub metadata

Updated Apps

170 more apps were updated
(expand for the full list)

Thank you for reading this week’s TWIF 🙂

Please subscribe to the RSS feed in your favourite RSS application to be updated of new TWIFs when they come up.

You are welcome to join the TWIF forum thread. If you have any news from the community, post it there, maybe it will be featured next week 😉

To help support F-Droid, please check out the donation page and contribute what you can.

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Free time? Test some apps!

✇F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
Par :linsui

This Week in F-Droid

TWIF curated on Friday, 26 Dec 2025, Week 52

Community News

AFWall+ was updated to 4.0.1. We missed a minor fixes version last year, hence this update comes after a two year pause in development. This classic app has now Material Design, new rules management, logging, more security, latest Android support, arm64 support and more. The AFWall+ proposition is harder and harder to use, as devices are hard to unlock and gain root control. If you don’t have root access, and most of you don’t, try our other VPN-based, no-root firewalls.

FadCam was updated to 3.0.1, now with annotations, remote control during live streaming, fragmented MP4, custom watermarks, performance improvements (45-50% less CPU, 28-33% better battery, 30% less memory), a cleaner interface, better settings, improved audio, video corruption fixes, fixed memory leaks, better stability and more.

While reading device reviews we usually look at performance scores to find out if we want to upgrade our old devices. The test apps are (mostly?) proprietary, which make them either unwanted on our devices or harder to get. We’ve just included Finalbenchmark 2 - CPU Test, Comprehensive open source CPU benchmark and performance test, so hopefully we have an easier way to test. What’s next? Ask reviewers to start using it too, easy, right?

kitshn (for Tandoor) was updated to 2.0.0 adding compatibility with Tandoor v2, overhauled design using Material 3 Expressive, a new Social Media Import function to import Instagram and TikTok posts and much more.

LaundryNotes was updated to 2.0 but now it has a new key, as sometimes these things happens. Did you install it in the past? Make sure you backup, uninstall and reinstall the new one.

Li-Ri was updated to 3.1.6 adding experimental TV and controller support. Use the holidays to test?

NWS Weather Alerts Widget was updated to 2.2.3 and brings an app almost entirely rewritten in Kotlin, targeting modern Android, Modern Design, updates for the widget, new way to connect to the NWS services and more

Shots Studio was updated to 1.9.52 as we had to skip several versions until reproducible builds were fixed. A lot has changed in the last 4 months: Material Design was added, better on-boarding, fonts, more models support, Settings UI was revamped, more languages, smoother animations and zoom, easier collections creation and plenty of fixes and polish.

Stocks Widget was updated to 4.0.035 and it’s back with a FLOSS version.

Newly Added Apps

11 more apps were newly added
  • Caff: Quick settings tile providing caffeine mode functionality (keep display on)
  • Cfait: Powerful, fast and elegant CalDAV task / TODO manager
  • CleverKeys: Open-source gesture keyboard with Termux support
  • Medical Calendarlog: Privacy-focused medical event tracking using your device’s calendar system
  • My Price Log: Track and compare prices at local shops, offline
  • NotiFilter: Silence annoying notifications
  • OpenPhotoFrame: Turn your old Android tablet into a beautiful digital photo frame
  • PocketCheck: A working memory app - “Anything to put in your pocket?”
  • Rebooter: Reboot device on schedule or variety of conditions
  • Trudido: Privacy-friendly, open-source to-do list app. No ads, no tracking.
  • Word Maker: A fun word puzzle game, completely private and offline

Updated Apps

173 more apps were updated
(expand for the full list)

Thank you for reading this week’s TWIF 🙂

Please subscribe to the RSS feed in your favourite RSS application to be updated of new TWIFs when they come up.

You are welcome to join the TWIF forum thread. If you have any news from the community, post it there, maybe it will be featured next week 😉

To help support F-Droid, please check out the donation page and contribute what you can.

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